Fox News has jumped into the controversy surrounding rape allegations made against Bill Cosby.
Taking the position that “liberals are turning on Bill Cosby over rape allegations,” Fox News host Howard Kurtz claims Cosby’s treatment by the media is driven by distinctions between how conservatives view Cosby versus the opinions of liberals.
Kurtz writes and reports in the video below that
[T]he reactions [to the allegations] are breaking down along political lines. Conservatives, who admire the way that Cosby has spoken out against dysfunction and lousy parenting in black families, are skeptical. Liberals, who view themselves as champions of women’s rights, are abandoning him.
To support his premise that media coverage persecution is “also being filtered through a political lens on the African-American superstar who dared take on his own community,” Kurtz cites an incident in 2004 when “Cosby disrupted a celebration—a Constitutional Hall gala marking the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Ed—with some blunt talk about the black lower class stating:
“People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now you have these knuckleheads walking around…. The lower economic people are not holding up their end of the deal. These people are not parenting.”
“I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was two? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18, and how come you didn’t know that he had a pistol? And where is his father?”
Kurz notes that Cosby also ridiculed ghetto talk and thuggery:
“They’re standing on the corner and they can’t speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk: ‘Why you ain’t,’ ‘Where you is.’…
“These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, ‘The cops shouldn’t have shot him.’ What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?”
And while it might sound reasonable in this context to conclude that liberal media is, in fact, “out to get” Cosby, Kurtz completely overlooks the known facts in this case – namely:
1. Cosby has been accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women, five of then who have been named. Indeed, as Vox reports, on Tuesday “the 15th woman to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault came forward.”
2. Bruce Castor the former Montgomery County District Attorney who declined to charge Cosby in 2004, revealed to The Mail Online this week that “he wanted to arrest the star – but had insufficient proof,” a claim that was further confirmed by NBC News who he told:
“I didn’t say that he didn’t commit the crime. There was insufficient admissible and reliable evidence on which to base a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s prosecutor speak for, ‘I think he did it but there’s just no enough here to prosecute.'”
3. The only legal action taken against Cosby [1] “was eventually settled, and, as part of that agreement, the plaintiff agreed not to discuss her allegations publicly,” as reported by Vox and NBC News. As Vox reports
Constand’s lawyers produced 11 more women who claimed Cosby had assaulted them, bringing the total number of accusers to 13. […] Taken together, the allegations paint a disturbing — and consistent — picture. The women accuse him of drugging them with a laced drink or pills and then sexually assaulting them.
4. None of Cosby’s accusers stand to receive any financial gain from speaking out about their accusations. As Vox notes:
Some of the women called as witnesses in Constand’s case have spoken out since, sharing their allegations against Cosby with Philadelphia Magazine, People, the Daily Mail, and the Washington Post. None of them stand to gain anything from coming forward, as the statute of limitations has made it impossible for them to personally sue Cosby.
Footnote:
1. The former director of operations of Temple State University’s women’s basketball program, Andrea Constand, sued Cosby in 2004 “claiming claiming that he had given her pills he called ‘herbal medication’ to help her cope with stress when she visited his Philadelphia-area mansion in 2004 and, after she consumed them, he touched her breasts and genitals and assaulted her,” as reported by NBC News.
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